3 Data-Driven Tips to Improve Your Creative
December 2023 | by Jacob Klingensmith
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We’ve all been there. It’s 3pm on Tuesday and you have a work deadline you have to meet by the end of the day. But instead, you’re scrolling through Instagram, desperately avoiding that report. After wasting 15 minutes, you begin to realize that everything starts to look the same…
If you are a brand using social media, you need to have something that pops. With over 3.2 billion users across social media platforms, developing a unique brand for your social media is crucial for success.
Here are five of our favorite big brands that gave us a reason to stop scrolling.
1. Chipotle
Chipotle does one important thing on Twitter that boosts interaction and classifies it as one of the best brands out there: it has a clear voice. One of the most important parts of its voice is its engagement with current events. If there is something going on in the world, you can bet Chipotle is going to post something clever about it.
Yes, we deliver to Area 51.
— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) July 15, 2019
Developing a voice for your band is an essential component of creating a personality for your product and attracting specific demographics to engage with your content. A clear and unique brand voice helps keep all marketing communications consistent and allows you to develop content that stands out.
The unique characteristics of Chipotle’s voice are its use of sarcasm and wit that caters to a younger demographic that constantly engages with them on social media. The company’s tweets don’t sound like they are coming from a brand, but instead mimic those of a social media influencer. Think “dad jokes” that are actually funny.
2. Magnolia Market
As the stars of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper,” Chip and Joanna Gaines use Instagram to bring their show to life in your living room. The Magnolia Market Instagram account is full of ~aesthetic~ photos of home design and Magnolia products that range from furniture to cooking recipes. What don’t they do?
If you scroll through the account, visuals and filters of the images are consistent. This consistency is important because users can count on reliable content that is representative of new products which are available for purchase. When a brand’s follower’s know what to expect, they are more likely to be loyal followers.
More than 800,000 shoppers use Instagram every month, and brands around the world are using the platform to share their stories and products with consumers in a visually engaging way. With Instagram’s shopping features, all followers have to do is tap on the photo to see product names and prices. The customers are redirected to their website and can purchase what they see in the social post immediately.
And these features had returns. Instagram shoppable posts increased traffic for brands who used them by 1,416%. Talk about ROI.
3. Nike
While sometimes controversial, Nike dominates the social media conversation year after year through its relationships with prominent athletes. Nike cares more about telling a story than selling its brand. As Nike follows different athletes and invests in their stories, it often finds itself in the middle of divisive political issues which land them in countless news headlines. Whether or not you support every issue Nike chooses to champion through its relationships with its athletes, its ability to capitalize off controversy, share stories, and drive conversation about its brand is impressive.
Through Instagram’s IGTV feature, Nike is able to share inspiring mini testimonials that last longer than the typical 60 second video of how professional athletes #justdoit. This moves Nike beyond the domain of just selling sportswear to branding themselves as a lifestyle connected to real people and real issues. In this example, Nike documents the “birthplace of dreams” of Giannis Antetokounmpo, showing his evolution from a kid in Athens to one of the top stars in the NBA.
4. Microsoft
Take a look at Microsoft’s Instagram. Did you feel like it was trying to sell you something? Probably not, but now you want to be a Microsoft customer, don’t you? That’s because Microsoft doesn’t just show off its products and give you links to buy. It shows customers using its products and tells their stories.
For example, in the post below, Microsoft mentions that Dog Spot uses its product, the cloud platform, but does not solely focus on it. It quickly brushes over its own promotion, and starts to tell the story of how it’s customers are creating awesome technology that it is proud to be a part of as a company.
Microsoft lets the product sell itself. It knows it has good products, it knows it has a large following, but it still has to break through the clutter. It uses a refreshing strategy to tell it’s customer’s stories by “celebrating people who use technology to break boundaries and achieve more.”
Consumers see over 4,000 ads a day, so successful brands have to make themselves stand out. Microsoft does this by telling followers about all of the cool projects others have done with its products, and waiting for the rest to come naturally.
5. Target
Target wants to be “your happy place on Instagram” (check its bio if you don’t believe us) and it’s pretty good at it. Target encourages followers to tag them in their posts that are Target-related for a chance to be featured on their account. This creates organic user-generated content that humanizes Target and utilizes its most loyal customers.
Leveraging content that is created by your most passionate advocates is helpful in multiple ways. First, it saves the brand time and energy in generating content. Second, it keeps the brand’s stakeholders happy and makes them feel like they’re an important part of the conversation. Lastly, it taps into the need for your audience to speak and to be heard.
Featuring real customers with your product is an awesome way to cultivate engagement. When users have the opportunity to directly contribute to a brand they love, they are more likely to be engaged. Through Instagram stories, Target shares content without flooding your feed with a million posts.
Even though these corporate brands operate on a massive scale, they still find ways to stand out and create engaging content. You can be corporate and non-edgy and still be interesting.
Have any social media brands really wowed you recently? What makes you stop scrolling? Send us a tweet and share your favorites with us today!